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Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

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Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#191

Post by lesuorac »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #179
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using business income to invest in yourself as an individual, that's pretty illegal where I live. Maybe it's different where you are. The extent to which I can invest in myself is using business supplies or equipment for personal tasks here and there. Like, print some things or use some software I didn't pay taxes on. I know some people go as far as driving their work vehicles around, but that's totally ill…

Check out Hess v Commissioner. For certain types of businesses the individual is almost indistinguishable from the business.

To save people the trouble.

> The relevant ruling on this subject came in 1994 in a case known as Hess v. Commissioner. The plaintiff, a self-employed exotic dancer, had implants that expanded her bust size to the size 56FF. For tax purposes, she treated these as a deductible business expense on her schedule C. The IRS contested her deduction.

> ... The courts ruled in her favor:

https://taxfoundation.org/blog/how-breast-implant-size-relev...

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#192

Post by kjksf »

rvnx wrote: post #17
casenmgreen wrote: post #3

I may be wrong, but I understand this is because the company invests all of its income into its business - which means more jobs, work for other companies, and so on. I think it better money goes into the economy, in a reasonably efficient way, rather than being taken by the State, and used in an unreasonably inefficient way.

In the past, they used another technique as well, they used corporate money to buy Dogecoin (and some Bitcoin too) to justify investments. Not in a small amount, we talk about more than 1B USD. https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/20/elon-musk-discloses-that-t... From a tax perspective, they are spending to acquire assets, which is very convenient.

Buying Bitcoin doesn't reduce taxes. It's no different than investing company's cash into a different currency or bonds.

In fact, when Tesla bought Bitcoin accounting rules for Bitcoin were very unfavorable in that the bitcoin wasn't valued at the price in a given quarter but, and it's hard to believe, only at the lowest ever price. So on paper the company could only loose money by holding Bitcoin.

That idiotic rule was part of Democrat's lawfare against Bitcoin.

This accounting rule was changed recently.

Also, Tesla never bought Dodgecoin. That Techcrunch article is just wrong.

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#193

Post by BenjiWiebe »

kemotep wrote: post #185
kstrauser wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a terrible idea.

It’s a radical idea but with there being 1.4 billion acres of private property in the United States, at an average of $10,000 per acre for a Land Value Tax would raise 14 Trillion. Divided between the States and Federal Government, that would cover the 6.75 Trillion Dollar budget including the over 700 Billion Dollar deficit. With one single Tax that for many people would be a massive tax cut. We would balance the bu…

Pretty sure that would immediately put every farmer out of business.

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#194

Post by wnevets »

kjksf wrote: post #189
wnevets wrote: post #33

Why pay taxes when you can just buy the Whitehouse? It's so much cheaper.

The tax rules used by Tesla in 2024 were applicable to all companies and if Democrats wanted different rules, they could have changed in 2020-2023. But why make sense when you can opine. It's so much easier.

Did every CEO actively campaign for the current president? I'm curious tho were you upset when the "twitter files" were released and found out that the Biden campaign asked for hunter's dick pics to be removed?

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#195

Post by kemotep »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #193
kemotep wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a radical idea but with there being 1.4 billion acres of private property in the United States, at an average of $10,000 per acre for a Land Value Tax would raise 14 Trillion. Divided between the States and Federal Government, that would cover the 6.75 Trillion Dollar budget including the over 700 Billion Dollar deficit. With one single Tax that for many people would be a massive tax cut. We would balance the bu…

Pretty sure that would immediately put every farmer out of business.

I did say average. Land in the middle of nowhere Nebraska is already dirt cheap compared to land in downtown Manhattan and agriculture is a productive use of the land. A Land Value Tax ideally targets the unimproved value of land. Farming would reduce the unimproved value and lower the tax burden.

It would be the McMansions in suburbs that would be more onerously taxed if anything.

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#196

Post by [deleted] »

kjksf wrote: post #181
lvl155 wrote: post #30

You know what’s ironic is that Tesla survived because of Obama era subsidies. They were desperate to get one private enterprise to succeed because so many solar and other “clean” energy private ventures failed during that period. So, in my view, Obama created Elon. Now the rest of America has to deal with it in addition to the abject failure that is PPACA which ballooned US healthcare costs (not that Republicans have…

> so many solar and other “clean” energy private ventures failed during that period You can't even see you contradict yourself. If all companies were supported by Obama but they all failed, but not Tesla, it wasn't Obama who made companies succeed but Musk who made Tesla succeed. Not to mention you fail to enumerate those supposed subsidies. The only significant think I know about is $465 million LOAN in 2010, which…

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#198

Post by freeone3000 »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #161
Dylan16807 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's multiple years of increase being accounted for all at once.

So you're saying 25% of Tesla's earnings last quarter wasn't even earned last quarter and wasn't related to anything Tesla as business did?

It was due to the change in IRS guidance on how to account for increases in value in cryptocurrency -- in short, treating it closer to a forex exchange (where the value is continually accounted) instead of a securities transaction (where the value is accrued when sold). The value then had to be retroactively accounted for.

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#199

Post by freeone3000 »

ryandrake wrote: post #140
SideQuark wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do. The biggest of all tax giveaways is the home mortgage deduction and tax deduction on employer paid healthcare. The tax sheltered things like retirement accounts, HSAs, Roths, college savings plans, energy credits, home improvement credits, car breaks, annd do on, are also huge tax giveaways to citizens. Those are the biggest tax breaks in all US law, far larger than all of corporate breaks combined. Then, as…

None of these things, or even the combination of all of these things, allows an individual to shield 100% of their income from taxes, the way corporations shield their income from taxes.

They absolutely do! Earned Income is a refundable tax credit - 47% of all Americans pay no net income tax, and some receive a refund in excess of any taxes paid.

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#200

Post by refurb »

snypher wrote: post #23
andreygrehov wrote: post #13

> Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. In other words, no experience with how corporate taxes work.

If 0% is how they work, then they don't work.

That's seems like a claim not root in an understanding of how businesses work.

If a company invest $3B to become profitable, it seem entirely logical that they can use those expenses to offset any future profit.

If you don't don't do that, companies that require large investments to become profitable simply won't exist.

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